Song – Ilamai Itho Itho
Movie – Sakalakala Vallavan
Singer – SP Balasubrahmanyam
Composer – Ilaiyaraaja
Artistes – Kamal Haasan, Ambika
Lyricist – Vaali
Kamal Haasan’s “Hiii everybody… Wish you a hapyyy new yearr!” song from Sakalakala Vallavan, is every New Year’s song of the day for us Ilaiyaraaja fans. This is one of the few groovy songs by Ilaiyaraaja, that we still sing and is just as popular after three decades.
In the 1982 film Kamal comes in many disguises, all in an attempt to take revenge against a landlord who rapes his sister. Overnight, in this song, he becomes an urban youth who wants to attract the rapist’s sister (Ambika), and ends up marrying her.
So he’s on a bike, on skates, hanging from ropes, and doing stunts in a dream-like disco we wish we were at. He sings that he’s the youth and is attractive, all girls have eyes for him. He lifts and drops women like they were props, and he is full of himself, but all that aside, it’s true that we can’t take our eyes off this glitzy, handsome Kamal.
Through the song, he dances in leather pant-suit and crop tops, among people who are quietly sitting and drinking – and this might all just be happening in their heads, and our heads, in a regular, boring pub.